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$500,000 program would advocate for Road Home grant recipients

Road Home Meeting.jpeg

Housing advocates, accompanied by New Orleans City Councilman James Gray, discuss the Road Home program at a meeting of the Legislature's Joint Committee on Hurricane Recovery, July 21, 2014. (Photo by Robert McClendon, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)

As state legislators on Monday discussed a half-million dollar program to advocate for Road Home grant recipients, they had one big question: Aren't we already paying someone to do that?

It was a dig at the contractor currently tasked with managing cases for Road Home, a post-Hurricane Katrina rebuilding program that has doled out $9.7 billion to residents whose homes were damaged or destroyed in the storm.

The legislators, members of the Select Committee on Hurricane Recovery, discussed the program at length Monday evening (July 21) at New Orleans City Hall.

Homeowners and advocacy groups have for years complained about the handling of Road Home applications, first with contractor ICF and then with Hammerman & Gainer International, which took over case management in 2009 when the state declined to renew ICF's contract.

ICF had pocketed over $800 million by the end of its contract.

Reports of unreturned calls, missing paperwork and general frustration continue to abound under HGI. The company did not have a representative speak at the meeting and attempts to reach it after business hours were unsuccessful.

Pat Forbes, director of the state's Office of Community Development, which runs the Road Home program, defended HGI, saying the firm was "doing its job," but acknowledged that the public seems to have lost faith in the company.

Over 93 percent of the 130,000 homeowners who received money have rebuilt their homes, fulfilling the primary objective of the program, he said. Yet, only a little more than half have fully complied with the requirements of the program.

That suggests that many people, though they clearly have used the money for its intended purpose, have grown fed up with the system and are no longer willing to deal with it, Forbes said.

Thus, he said, he's happy to set aside $500,000 in Road Home money to support a so-called boiler room. Staffed by nonprofits that have long been helping residents navigate Road Home, the boiler room would provide advocates to homeowners to help deal with HGI and the state.

The state is currently pursuing about 32,000 homeowners who have not fully documented compliance with all the program's requirements.

About 5,000 of those have not moved back into their houses, according to housing advocates.

Forbes assured the legislators that the money to fund the boiler room would come out of money earmarked for grant management, not money that could be used to help more people return home.